Basic Thrift Guide

Home budgeting is becoming more difficult to manage nowadays. Paying the monthly consumption fees in electricity, water, telephone, dsl, and cable will already create a hole in our pockets. Not yet to mention the daily food we need to buy to sustain the family’s health plus other commodities, supplies, daily expenses and necessities in our homes.

Gasoline hike and basic commodity prices had climbed up recently, while salaries and wages stay put. We need to do extreme care in spending money that is to allocate it wisely. I already implemented an austerity program in our home to economize electric and water consumption. Economical management plays an important role to trim down excess costs.

Let me share you some of the Basic Thrift Guide I put into practice to help lower down our monthly expenses.

• Unplug appliances when not in use
• Laptop usage for my online tasks, as it consumes less power than the desktop
• Buying kitchen and laundry supplies in bulk for a two-week replenishment.
• Schedule the laundry twice a week instead of every other day.
• Watering the plants with the used water in rinsing clothes
• Iron clothes in the morning
• Utilize the time feature of the air conditioning unit
• Turn off the lights if  day lighting is sufficient
• Defrost the refrigerator weekly
• Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs as it only use about 25% of normal bulbs and would last ten times longer
• If there’s a call for a furniture or home appliance replacement, opt for a repair at the moment while waiting for discounted bargain sale.

I would be very glad to hear your added ideas to my Thrift Guide list. Speak your minds; together we help each other in learning the economical management in our humble abodes.